BADASS MINDSET PODCAST

How to become a morning person!

• Lacy Wafer • Season 2 • Episode 46

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Ready to conquer those early mornings for good? Get ready to unlock the power of a purposeful morning mindset! In this episode, you'll discover why your intentions matter and how shifting your narrative about mornings can revolutionize your routine. Whether it's fitting in a workout, tackling chores, or savoring personal time, understanding your 'why' provides the clarity needed to make lasting changes. We'll also talk about how choosing empowering thoughts can rewire your brain, making the practice of waking up early not just feasible but genuinely enriching. And, by adopting small adjustments and focusing on gradual progress, you'll train your brain and body to embrace an earlier start. 

Join me in this conversation, and let's work together to create a morning routine that enhances your productivity, well-being, and empowers you to become the best version of yourself!! 

Share a personal story or submit a question you'd like answered in a future episode!

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❤️‍🔥Add us on IG & TikTok @badassmindsetpodcast & @boldlylacy to connect deeper + ignite your journey and keep your growth game on point!!🤘🚀 Let’s goooo!

Speaker 1:

Hey, bestie, welcome, or welcome back to the Bold and Badass Podcast. I'm your host, lacey, and I'm fired up that you're here, because I am so tired of women feeling inadequate for not being further along in life and like they're crazy or ungrateful, even for wanting more. On this show, I'm going to help you cut through the noise, turn your setbacks into your success story and become the most bold and badass version of you. I'm talking about calling in the most exciting opportunities, experiences and people into your life and claiming the abundance that is your birthright. So if you're ready to make some serious magic happen, grab your coffee and water and let's fucking go. Hello, beautiful, I am so glad that you're here and I'm so grateful that you took time out of your day to listen to this podcast and to click on this episode, specifically because the fact that you're here just means that you're my kind of people and I love you, so thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

This episode is a result of this question that I get asked almost weekly, literally. I recently shared that I started a new part-time job at my local Lifetime Fitness. I work there from 4.30 to 8 am, which, if you know nothing about Lifetime Fitness, I think they're all over the United States. But if you don't know, my husband and I joke. We say that Lifetime Fitness is like a step below a country club, because they literally have everything. It's amazing the amenities they offer, the atmosphere, it's just absolutely amazing. And so the reason why I wanted to work there is because I've always wanted a lifetime membership. But, to be totally transparent, I'm not at a point in my journey where I'm willing to drop $300 per membership to work out there and to do things there. So I was like what if I find a way to still be able to work out there but for a fraction of the cost? So I found a part-time opening position in the Lifetime Cafe where I get to make coffee and shakes and stuff from 4.30 to 8 am. It's a very short shift, monday through Friday and I get a free membership and my son gets a free membership and my husband gets significantly discounted membership. He only pays $60. Totally worth it for a few extra hours of my day during the week and since I'm already at the gym, it's easier to be consistent with my movement and my working out because I'm already there. So I work out right after I get off. I don't have to will myself to get up and go to the gym. I'm already there, so it's like such a win-win-win.

Speaker 1:

Well, anyways, since I've started working at the gym, I wake up at 3.45 am to get ready and get there on time, and that is very early for some people. Okay, some people are just barely getting into bed at that time, or maybe just an hour or two before, and for a good part of my life I've been a morning person, quote unquote but that hasn't always been the case. I've gone through multiple periods in my life where I was not a morning person at all, but I trained my brain and my body to get back here, and I want to share with you how I did it, because the people that are always asking me how do you wake up this early? How do you get up and do this and are productive? How do you do that this early? I can't wake up, I cannot get myself up at that time or I'm exhausted. The people who are usually asking me this are women and moms specifically, who want to get up earlier, either to work out, prep for the day, be more productive or, at the very least, just have a little bit of me time before the day begins and then they spend the rest of it pouring into everyone else. So, as I said, up until recently, since I started at the gym and started getting up at 3.45 am, I had been getting up at 4.45, and consistently, for almost three years, and again, this was something that I trained my body to do.

Speaker 1:

My personal reasons for wanting to get up that early were, just like most of the people who've asked me about it to prep for the day, set myself up for success, set myself up to be more productive, have a little bit of me time before everyone else wakes up, and really just to start my day off on the right foot, because I'm a big believer in how you start your day can set the tone for the entire day. It can either lead you down a negative spiral or it can set you up for a positive spiral. And I'm not saying that you can't change your trajectory during the day. This is also something I'm a big advocate for. You can always change your trajectory. If you started off on the wrong side of the bed, or started off on a high note or a low note, whatever, you can change it at any point in time, but it's a lot easier to go down a certain path, whether it be positive or negative, when you start your day that way and set the tone for your day.

Speaker 1:

So I had been doing hours and I mean hours of research on the best morning routines and the morning routines of famous and highly successful people to figure out what are they doing differently, how are they so successful? Why are they thriving? I researched this for years, but I started writing everything down because I wanted to notice the patterns. I wanted to see if anything stood out, and what I found is that in everyone's morning routine, some of them had 10 steps long morning routines and others had three steps long morning routines but what I found that every single person that I either looked up to or wanted to be like had some form of these same three things, and it was movement, mindset and energy. You might want to write these down. Energy you might want to write these down so some form of exercise or movement, some form of personal development around their mindset, like reading a book, listening to a podcast, watching a motivational YouTube video and then fueling their body properly. That's the energy piece.

Speaker 1:

So I played and played and played with the exact things that I would do for each of those categories and even the order in which I would do them. At some point in time, I wanted to work out and move my body first and then read and meditate, and then, at another point in time, I wanted to read and meditate first and then work out. I tried all these different scenarios and combinations and it wasn't always just read, meditate, work out. I did different types of exercises within each category. So at one point I was watching motivational videos on YouTube that were like five minutes long on my drive to work. At one point, I was making smoothies for myself every single morning. At one point I was doing stairs first thing in the morning to break a sweat, and then other times I'm like, no, I'm just going to go for a 15 minute walk or I'm just going to stretch. So I played and played with this to see what would work for me, what combination and order of things was really going to work. And what I learned is that you can interchange so many different things for each category and you can even do them in different orders, and you'll still get the same or a similar effect.

Speaker 1:

But what it comes down to is you as a person, what's effective for your personality type and your character, and also what season you're in. But the earlier in the morning the better, because there really just is something different and more effective about those few early morning hours when it's dark and quiet and most of the rest of the world is still asleep. A lot of magic can happen during that window. So highly highly recommend you getting up earlier if you have the capacity to. There are obviously some seasons, like having a newborn or working the overnight shift, that maybe that will have to be kind of tweaked a little bit. But use your discretion to determine whether it's genuinely possible for you or if it would just simply require some intentional adjustments to your daily routines and lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

But I would make every single effort that you possibly can to make early rising a habit. And in order to do so, if you're not a natural born early riser, you will need to create some foundational habits to set yourself up to be successful and actually get the benefits from waking up early and not just being like overly tired and miserable the whole time. So I'm gonna help you with that. That's what this episode is dedicated for. I'm gonna give you the steps you'll need to take to train your brain and your body and set yourself up to be successful and have a really great experience with this. Okay, so if you're in the position where you can take notes and write these steps down, I would go ahead and whip out a notebook or whip out the notes app on your phone. But if you're not, not to worry, just make a mental note to come back to right before the 10 minute mark or so. That's where this part begins. You can re-listen or you can even scroll through the transcript, which I believe is available to you in the show notes. You can scroll down through the transcript and find what these steps are and write them down later. But here's the first step, the first and second most important. You'll learn why it's the second most important in a second.

Speaker 1:

But the first step is to determine your intention for wanting to wake up earlier. Why do you want to wake up earlier than you currently are? What are you wanting to do during that time? What do you want that time to be dedicated for? Do you want to get up earlier to exercise? Do you want to get up earlier to get chores out of the way? Do you want to get some extra work done? Do you just want to prep and get a head start on your day. Do you want to have some you time? Do you want quality relationship time, like what is the actual desire beneath you, wanting to become an early riser, and also, how much time is this going to take? How much time do you actually need to allot for this thing which, depending on your work schedule or your other obligations, will help you determine how early you need to wake up for this?

Speaker 1:

So once you figure out what your intention is, then we have a starting point. Then we can actually figure out how to change your day-to-day, your habits, your schedule and everything else. But before we know why, we can't really do much else, because you're just going to be waking up early and then staring at the wall like, okay, what now? What do I want to do? And then you're still going to be scrambling to figure out what to do. Or once you start something, you might be scrambling to get it done before your day has to start. So we need to know the why. Why do you want to wake up early? What are you wanting to use this time for? How long is it going to take and, depending on what your responsibilities are whether it's kid drop-off, going to work or any other obligations that you have during the week, non-negotiables how early do we need to wake up for this? So, step one determine your intentions, your why. Step two, the most important of these steps, is that you will need to change your mindset.

Speaker 1:

If, up to this point, you have been saying I'm not a morning person, or I'm miserable in the mornings, or I'm too exhausted to wake up early, etc. Etc. You insert your narrative. You are creating a narrative that your brain takes very seriously and does not know the difference of what you literally mean and what you're just complaining about or exaggerating or exaggerating. I am telling you right now you must learn to become very intentional with your word choices, because your brain communicates with your body on how to feel, based on the thoughts and the words, aka the narrative, that you feed it. So think of your words and your narrative from now on as your brain's food or fuel source. If you feed it crap, you're going to feel crap. If you feed it empowering and uplifting energy, you're going to feel empowered and uplifted and energized.

Speaker 1:

Now, this may take some time, depending on how long you've been living with the identity that you're not a morning person or that you're miserable in the mornings. But this is something that you can work on right now. It takes minimal effort, minimal energy, minimal time, and you can just start changing the narrative by saying I am a morning person, I'm excited to wake up, I'm so glad I have energy in the mornings, I'm excited to get shit done in the mornings. From now on and if you're so far down the I'm not a morning person rabbit hole that you're like, I can't even say this because I don't believe it with an inch of my body. My body knows that I'm lying. Reword it so that it's not a lie. I am excited to become a morning person. I am excited that I am learning to love mornings. I am excited that I'm learning to love waking up early. I am so excited that I am becoming an early riser and I am being more productive in the mornings and starting my day off on a positive note. Start initiating this new narrative that aligns with what you want it to be. It aligns with your why. Why are you waking up early? Because I want to be healthier. I'm so excited to wake up in the morning to exercise because I am becoming healthier and healthier every single day. I am so glad that I have energy and motivation to get up in the morning because I'm able to get some extra chores around the house or some extra work done. I am so grateful that I'm becoming a morning person, because having that quality, quiet me time in the morning really sets me up for a great day.

Speaker 1:

You can insert whatever narrative applies to you and your specific circumstance or desire and just start wiring that. Anytime you catch yourself in a negative cycle or a negative narrative, don't judge yourself, don't beat yourself up, but cut yourself off right there and say crisscross, delete, rewind. No, actually I am blah, blah, blah. I could talk about this specific step for hours on end because it's my favorite topic. It's why I'm in school for neuroscience, it's why my career and passion is dedicated to mindset work, because I've learned firsthand from my own experience that when you upgrade your mindset, you upgrade every single area of your life physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, relationship-ly if that's a word relationally, however you say it, every single area of my life has improved when I changed my mindset. And, again, if you sit and think on it and you realize I'm a really negative person or I've always held negative narratives about myself and my experiences. Then this might take a little while to rewire, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

You wouldn't expect somebody who's never shot a basketball to come into the gym and make a hundred shots in a row. That would just be crazy, right. You wouldn't think anything negative about them missing shots. You would just tell them to practice and practice makes perfect, right? So same goes with your narrative Practice and practice and practice makes perfect. Eventually, when you've practiced enough, your brain it's like flags to your brain. It's like, oh okay, I keep hearing this. So this must be important. Let's take in this information and eventually that new narrative that you're driving. It just becomes who you are, it becomes how you operate, it becomes your entire life.

Speaker 1:

So step number two change your mindset. Upgrade your mindset, upgrade your life. Step number three is you'll need to get better sleep. Now I have an entire episode on how to revive your sleep. It's one of my early, early episodes, but sleep controls so much of our lives and the quality of our sleep a thousand percent controls the quality of our energy and the way that our day begins. So what I'm going to say on this step is going to be a lot shorter than the others, but just know there are resources here for you. I have an entire episode on why this is so important and how to get better sleep.

Speaker 1:

Trust me when I say you'll wanna take advantage of this, because this plays a bigger impact in your health and your happiness than 99% of other things, including the way you eat, including the movement you get, including all the other things that you think are actually more important and are actually what dictates your health and wellbeing. The quality of your sleep is probably, if not number one. It's definitely top three of biggest priorities for your health and well-being as a whole, and it's going to make a big difference on helping you to become a morning person and be a successful early riser. Okay, so that's all I'm going to say on that. Number three get better sleep. Number four.

Speaker 1:

Step number four is you'll need to do a better job of setting yourself up. So what do I mean by setting yourself up? I mean that your successful morning starts the night before Start, making it a priority and a part of your nighttime routine to set out your clothes if you're wanting to work out. Set out your work or whatever you're needing for work if you're wanting to get up to work. Set out your book, your hot tea, your coffee, whatever it is that you're wanting to get up and do during those little bit of time before your day starts, so that you have that many fewer steps to take in the morning when your brain and your body are still trying to wake up and get going.

Speaker 1:

All right, something I used to always say to my health and wellness clients when I did health and wellness coaching for women is that 80% of the work is just showing the fuck up For some reason. That's the hardest part for most of us. It's gaining the willpower somehow to just get our asses up and get going. Because how many times have you struggled to make it to the gym and then, as soon as you got there and started working out, you're like, oh my God, I'm so glad I came. Or this workout went way better than I thought, or you had a PR workout. You hit a personal record that day. It was one of the best workouts that you've ever had, but it was like the hardest day for you to get your ass up and get there. That is true for everything else and this as well.

Speaker 1:

So the easiest way to stay consistent with this and to get the maximum benefit out of becoming an early riser is to set yourself up. So add whatever steps that you can to your nighttime routine or, if you don't have a nighttime routine, start doing this 10 to 15 minutes before you crawl into bed. It's going to make a world of a difference for you. Trust. Step number four set yourself up. Step number five and this is a big one Start with small increments. Many of you are going to struggle with this because you're an all or nothing person, and when you take on a new venture or a new challenge, you want to be all in, you want to give it everything you got, you want to turn your whole world upside down and you want to get it all right right now. But I'm telling you that is the best way to set yourself up for failure, to reach burnout in only one or two weeks and to give it up thinking that you're a failure or that this just isn't meant to be for you or you're just not that type of person, when really you just didn't set yourself up correctly. You set yourself up for failure.

Speaker 1:

So start with small incremental changes. If you are currently going to bed at midnight and, for example, purposes you normally have to get up at 6 or 7 am. I don't want you to think that you're getting into bed at 8 pm tonight and getting up at 5 am tomorrow. Absolutely not. We go in 15-minute increments, so I want you to start with a 15-minute difference. If you go to bed at midnight, I want your first incremental change to be getting into bed at 11.45 pm. If you currently get up at 7 am, I want your first incremental change to be setting your alarm for 6.45 am, or keep it at 7 and just get in the habit of getting into bed early first. Once you're consistent with that for at least a week I'm not saying that your sleep has to be perfect, but you are physically in the bed 15 minutes earlier then we can add the next 15 minutes, right. Once you add the 15 minutes to the front end of your wake-up time. So let's say, for example, purposes you wake up at 7 am and now we're going to get up at 6.45 am, you're getting up only 15 minutes earlier than you would normally get up, right?

Speaker 1:

So, depending on what you're wanting to use that early morning time for, if 15 minutes isn't enough for what your long-term goal or intention is, you can start by doing a condensed version of what you're wanting to work up to. Okay. So if your goal is exercise, then go for a 10-minute walk around the block or write down three things that you're grateful for while you wait for your coffee to brew. If it's to work on your mindset or to have some you time, you could read five or six pages of a book that you're into or that you're wanting to start. If it's to get some chores done, you can fold the laundry, but don't put it away just yet, just start folding it. You could start a morning skincare routine.

Speaker 1:

Whatever you want to do, that is going to be in alignment with what that early morning window is used for, and then you just go on about your day. I want you to do this for at least a week until you feel that, hey, this isn't so bad, and then you can add another 15 minutes to your adjustment. So once you get in a good routine of getting in bed 15 minutes earlier and waking up 15 minutes earlier now you can get in bed 30 minutes earlier and wake up 30 minutes earlier. You just keep incrementally adding that small change, and the reason you do this is because you are training your brain and your body to adjust. If you go from getting into bed at midnight, waking up at seven, and you try to jump to getting into bed at eight and waking up at five, that's a shock to your brain and your nervous system. That's a shock because that's not what you've been doing for the last two years or the last five years or decade however long you've been doing this. It's a shock to your body and it's actually causing stress to your body, like the chemical response of stress.

Speaker 1:

Whether you're feeling stressed or not is a different story, but it creates stress in the body and at some point your body is going to be like okay, I've had enough. This is my breaking point, and that's when you start to hit burnout and you start to feel the weight of the change and it becomes too difficult and then you fall back into that all or nothing cycle. So we don't want to set ourselves up for that. We want to set ourselves up to be successful, and success comes with small daily habits, the ones that you can be consistent with and show up for day in and day out. We're making increments that are so small that you barely even notice that you're making a change. And the reason we do that is because the compound effect Small increments add up over time.

Speaker 1:

And so if you do this and you follow this path for a couple weeks or a couple months, you're going to look up here in two to three months and you're going to be like, wow, look how much time I have back, look how much more time I have, look how much more productive I've been, look how much happier I've been. You're going to see and feel the changes, but it won't have required you the amount of energy and effort that you expected, because it was done so incrementally that you were actually able to stick to it. You'll repeat this process until you're getting up at the time that you want to get up and you're going to bed at the time required for you to get a full seven to nine hours of sleep each night and still wake up at the time that you want to wake up. Now I'm saying full seven to nine hours. Okay, that is the goal for how long you want to have for your sleep window.

Speaker 1:

Like I said before, if you're a mom to a newborn or any age where your kid struggles to sleep, or you work an overnight shift or whatever your circumstance is that maybe throws off this perfect scenario, right, the scenario of what it would be like in a perfect world. Then, yes, you might have to make some adjustments, but you really, really want to try to get a full seven to nine hours of quality sleep each day or night to really reach the maximum benefit, and also for you to be healthy and at your max capacity. I don't mean that in the sense where you're stretching yourself to your max. I mean to where your body can fully function the way it's supposed to, because any amount of sleep less than seven hours six, six and a half for some people, but that's pushing it is actually very detrimental to your health, and not just in the long term, in the short term as well. I'm going to bring up that episode again here, because I talk about this in that sleep episode as well. Maybe I'll link it in the show notes for you so you can jump straight to it. But it's super, super important that you get that quality sleep for your health, for your sanity, for your well-being and, of course, for your success in whatever endeavors you take on. Now the biggest thing, which is probably going to take the longest to really wire in, but I put it at the front because you need to work at it immediately is just upgrading that mindset around it.

Speaker 1:

All You're going to manifest whatever it is that you believe and reinforce. If you wear the identity of a person that is always late, you're going to be late more often than you intend to be. If you wear the identity of a goof or a dingbat, a silly, dumb blonde, someone that's not all there, you're going to replicate that result of being in situations where you come off as a dingbat or a silly, dumb blonde or someone who's not all there and you're not going to get taken seriously, which is ultimately what you want, right? If you wear the identity of a morning person or an early riser, even if you're currently not one, you will eventually become a morning person by nature, because your brain will rewire and communicate differently to your body. Your subconscious plays such a huge role in this, and the reason why I'm harping on it so much is because you have to take this part seriously the most seriously, even if others don't believe in you and they think that this new lifestyle you're taking on is just a phase, and you'll come out of it. Eventually you'll go back to being your regular old lazy, not morning person, frantically not together self. You've just got to carry yourself differently and trust and know that it will work for you in due time If you keep showing up. You don't have to be perfect at it. This isn't an all or nothing thing, but if you keep showing up and keep restarting, driving in that new narrative and those new behaviors, you will become the person that you want to be and you will become a morning person with ease. I joined the 5am club, which, by the way, is one of my all time favorite, if not the most life changing books that I've ever read. 20 out of 10 recommend. But I joined the 5am club almost four years ago and my life has improved exponentially since then in every single way.

Speaker 1:

So I've got a little bit of action for you to take after you finish this episode. If you have the capacity to do this now, pull out a journal and do it now or, like I mentioned earlier, you can always just come back to this part of the episode. But I want you to take inventory of your current situation. What time are you currently going to bed? What time are you waking up? How much quality sleep are you getting? What are your obligations or responsibilities that are non-negotiables, like work, kids, things like that that have to happen in your schedule? Take inventory of that and then take a look at why are you wanting to wake up earlier? What are you wanting to do during that time and how much earlier would you need to get up in order to accomplish your goals for that time frame?

Speaker 1:

Once you figure that out, set a plan into motion. Go through the steps. One determine your intentions or your why. How much time is that going to take? Number two upgrade your mindset. Number three get better sleep. Number four set yourself up. Number five start with small increments. Go through each of these steps and set up a plan for yourself and start on it immediately.

Speaker 1:

Start today and then, if you're up for a little bit of extra accountability or support or encouragement, find me on Instagram at Boldly Lacey and send me a message letting me know what season of life you're currently in, what time you currently go to bed, what time you currently wake up and what time you want to go to bed and wake up, and why. I know that was a lot, that was a mouthful. Basically, tell me your story, okay. What are you currently doing and what do you want to be doing and why? I would love to know. I would love to encourage you or support you in any capacity that I can. You can either find me on Instagram or you can drop this into the link that's right here in the show notes. I think it says something like ask me a question for a future episode. You can share your story with me there if that's easier for you, if you don't want to be my friend on Instagram, but please let me know. I would love to support you in any capacity and, lastly, if you got any value out of this episode.

Speaker 1:

I would appreciate it so much if you took less than 30 seconds to leave a five-star review for the show, as it helps with the rankings and the searchability. So much for new people to continue to find this gold and apply these tools to their own lives and make these mindset transformations themselves. I love you so much. I'm so grateful for you and I hope that you have an amazing week. Thank you so much for being here and, queen, give yourself a high five for showing up and committing to be the best version of yourself for you and your people. You are such a badass for that, if you got anything good from this episode, would you send the love back by DMing me on Instagram at Boldly Lacey, letting me know exactly which part resonated with you. These types of messages empower me to keep showing up, and they also help me understand the types of conversations you really care about. All right, bestie, we'll talk again soon, but for now, it's time for you to step up and start being the badass that we both know you are.